Shortly after The Globe story broke, the [Trudeau] foundation publicly announced it would return $140,000 to the Chinese benefactor.
But the document says problems cropped up when the foundation began preparations to send back the money. The foundation’s board was alerted that the name on the reimbursement cheque to return the Chinese donation would not be the name of the real donor.
This stalled plans to return the cheque because the name of the true donor, according to the document, did not appear anywhere on the accounting books of the foundation, La Presse reported. It said such a reimbursement would therefore have been unlawful, according to the internal foundation document.
The Montreal newspaper [La Presse] reported that eight members of the foundation board, who were not directors at the time the donation was received in 2016, then demanded that an independent investigation be carried out. They asked those longer-serving members of the board to recuse themselves from any discussion of the matter because they were in a conflict of interest.
One source told La Presse the Chinese donation ultimately turned out to be a “stink bomb” that led to an internal crisis of governance at the foundation. The newspaper also reported that members of the board of directors even considered asking the office of the federal auditor general to investigate the matter.
So in short, the money wasn't actually returned, because they have zero idea of who truly donated the money, because they never had any sort of paper trail of who actually donated a substantial amount of money in their accounting books? The entire board then resigned once board members (who weren't present at the time of the donation) started pushing back on it? This absolutely reeks, and that is coming from somebody who defended the resignations yesterday as being a nothingburger.
!ping CAN